Tracking Cocaine Paste: Patterns in Large-Scale Seizures

Cocaine paste or "pasta básica" is an intermediary product between raw coca leaves and refined cocaine hydrochloride. Increasingly, drug trafficking networks are opting to export cocaine in this form rather than its more processed version, particularly to Western Europe, as part of a broader shift in smuggling strategies (International Crisis Group 10).

Coca paste leaving southern Colombia for Ecuador sells at approximately $550 per kilogram at the border. This price rises to $800 in Esmeraldas, Ecuador, and reaches $1,000 at the port of Guayaquil. After refinement, cocaine fetches around $2,000 per kilogram in Ecuador, before skyrocketing to $40,000 in Western Europe— exemplifying the enormous profit margins associated with cocaine processing and trafficking (International Crisis Group 13).

Unlike direct clandestine shipments via light aircraft, go-fast boats, or narco-submarines, traffickers increasingly rely on commercial maritime shipping to move larger quantities of cocaine at once. Given the large volume of international trade, traffickers assume that port authorities will only seize a small fraction of drug shipments, making containerized shipping a preferred method for smuggling operations (International Crisis Group 8).

These graphs thus investigate the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) database on global drug seizures, focusing on cocaine paste or pasta básica.

When filtering for "pasta básica" in the UNODC database, approximately 430,000 recorded seizures are returned. However, only about 75,000 of these involve quantities greater than 0.1 kg, and just 30,500 seizures contain more than 1 kg.

The distribution below visualizes these top 30,500 seizures providing insight into the scale and distribution of large seizures.

We see that the vast majority of the seizures are of a small quantity (1-2 kg) even within our top ~30,000 subset. However, how is the quantity seized distributed? In other words, do a few large seizures account for most of the total seized cocaine, or is it more evenly distributed?

To address this question, we plot a Lorenz Curve, a calculation commonly used to measure inequality within a given distribution. A Lorenz curve is the visualization of a Gini Coefficient where 0 represents perfect equality and 1 perfect inequality. As it relates to drug seizures, a score of 0 would suggest that all seizures had the same amount of cocaine paste and a score of 1 would represent that only one seizure had 100% of the total seized 'pasta base'.

Thus:

The Gini Coefficient for all "pasta básica" seizures is 0.9802397, suggesting a few large seizures represent the vast majority of the total seized cocaine paste. To be more exact:

This calls for a closer examination of the largest drug seizures, specifically those exceeding 100 kg. Let us take a closer look at their size, trends, and locations:

Note: These figures represent seizures, not overall drug trafficking volumes.

Bibliography:

• International Crisis Group. Curbing Violence in Latin America's Drug-Trafficking Hotspots. International Crisis Group, 2025. https://www.crisisgroup.org/latin-america-caribbean/colombia-ecuador-guatemala-honduras-mexico/108-curbing-violence-latin-america-drug-trafficking-hotspots.

• UNODC (2024), UNODC Research - Data Portal – Drug Trafficking & Cultivation. https://dataunodc.un.org/dp-drug-seizures (Accessed on [10/02/2025]).